Rick Sumner

No it isn't. A historiography starts by assessing what types of evidence we can use. Then we move to what approaches to the evidence are justified. Finally we end with what conclusions we can reasonably draw from those approaches.

That's a rather oversimplified definition. But it's how it works in a nutshell.

You don't develop with known answers. You test with known answers.

For an example of how oversimplified the descriptions of "history" we've seen lately are, I have a 400 page book on Etruscan religion. We can't even read the Etruscan language. Apparently "real" historians are not aware of the limitations described, for example, by gurugeorge above.

It could well be that untranslated inscriptions invalidate everything we think we know about the Etruscans. But that does not preclude investigation.

But it's designed to answer a specific NT question. I'm not interested in "how do we do history in this specific circumstance." I'm interested in "How do we do history?"

What does a good historical case look like? That is the nature of the question, after all.

Most other "god stories" where the deity is described as having engaged in an earthly "ministry" are in fact not considered mythical. For the reason noted above, most were heads of state. Even Romulus is considered historical by many (probably a majority, though a slight one) Roman historians.

If that is your first criteria, you're off to a bad start.

But really, moving to "god story" is a very late step in developing a historiography. It begins to look suspiciously like you haven't troubled yourself to come up with one. Without such a guideline, how do you know if you're doing anything more than wiggling your prejudices?

show_no_mercy

Is dog-on's suggestion prima facie not historiography, though? It would seem like a sound methodology to me. The fact that the NT has deified someone who on the face of it is not a head of state (but that the NT writers wanted to be "head of [a] state") should suggest that we're dealing with unique material and/or useless material.

Rick Sumner

No. Historiography starts more broadly A general approach to history needs to be developed before it can be adapted to a specific period.

Dog-on's suggestion is how we refine a historiography. Not how we build one.

This is closer.

So is unique material useless? If so, why is it "useful" in establishing mythicism? And if it's useless in both cases (which is secondary to the challenge I issued, but interesting to me nonetheless), is unique material always useless? Or just useless here?

Remember, the historiography I'm interested in is the one that is apparently employed with great frequency but never really described. The one that says the mythicist position reflects historical inquiry but the historicist position does not.

What's interesting to see is that the responses so far (including this one) seem to indicate a wish to see such a historiography developed. But if it doesn't already exist, then what the hell are people basing the conclusion on?

Rick Sumner

Let me try something to get it started.

I propose that "evidence" be defined as anything that dates to or describes a given period and location. The geographic and chronological sphere of the evidence has to be determined largely on a case by case basis, using known major events as markers. Sometimes these are very clear and immediate--the Age of Augustus, for example--sometimes they aren't, and the lines are softer for the cultural shifts--the year of four emperors, for example.

This will give us at best a very rough milieu, a limitation that needs to be acknowledged. We can speak broadly of the empire, for example, we can't give terribly specific information of the milieu of a district in Rome. This is true even in the most clearly defined periods. The life of a freedman in Asia was, for example, very different from the life of a Patrician in Rome. We are fortunate in the Age of Augustus to have a wealth of information. In most periods, we don't, and so we can't delineate those sorts of subtle differences that have massive effects.

Any piece of evidence, particularly in the ancient world, will probably fall under both categories and be evidence of both milieus. Thus, for example, Virgil's Aeneid counts as evidence of both the founding of Rome, and of the social climate of the Age of Augustus. It is very bad evidence of the former, and fairly good evidence of the latter. The next question would be to investigate the nuances of why that's the case.

Would anyone disagree with this description?

show_no_mercy

This is also how I view the gospel narratives. The "useless" in my previous post is in regards to the "historical" Jesus. We can tell a lot about the sociological context of the writers, but not so much about the "historical" person they're writing about. Which seems to be a general rule about people's writings period; whether in antiquity or modernity.

I'm open to the possibility of a mythological Jesus just as much as a historical Jesus. Or multiple historical Jesuses. Or... who knows what other permutations could have started Christianity. The only data we really have are basically other human beings' religious writings. We are reading what they want us, or their audience, to believe.

Toto

On the contrary, Pete's theory is falsifiable, but he arbitrarily rejects the evidence against it.

Richard Carrier has a PhD in ancient history. He is writing a book on this very topic, financed by some of the people on this board and other interested parties, and from what I have seen, it will answer your questions, at least better than a bunch of amateur internet posters could.

I don't recall making repeated proclamations about the bankruptcy of the HJ position. In fact, it seems quite lucrative, even if it is intellectually unsatisfying.

What is your professional background, and why are you so sure that everyone who disagrees with you is a hypocrite?

Rick Sumner

I stand corrected. It's a 240 page book on Etruscan religion. Since I'd hate for Toto to miss the opportunity to put in an Amazon URL, it's Nancy Thomson de Grummond and Erika Simon (eds), The Religion of the Etruscans (or via: amazon.co.uk), University of Texas Press, 2006.

aa5874

Please tell us the names of all the Roman Historians. What source of antiquity show the number of Roman Historians who considered Romulus human and the number of Roman Historians that considered Romulus non-human?

You are pulling information from out of somewhere behind your back.

Unless you are not acquainted with sources of antiquity, Roman Emperors did consider themselves men and some even refused deification or were not deified. Jews and Jesus believers did consider the Roman Emperors as men and did not worship them as Gods.

Unless you are not acquainted history or is suffering frmom amnesia, Jews and Jesus believers were vehemently opposed to the worship of men as Gods, even to the point of death.

The evidence therefore suggests that Jesus must have been known as or believed to be a God in order for Jews and Jesus believers to have worshiped him as a God.

But this is found in the writings of Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 18.8.1 Now, this is the kind of information about the Emperor Caius that is completely missing for Jesus of Nazareth.

There is no historical source of antiquity that wrote about a man called Jesus of Nazareth who asked the Jews to worship him as a God even though a man supposedly living for about thirty years in Galilee.

And now again Antiquities of the Jews 18.8.2, the Jews would rather die than worship Caius and his effigies.

See http://wesley.nnu.edu

So based on historical accounts, it must be that Jesus was first regarded as a God since he was worshiped as a God by Jews, and namely one Paul, who claimed he was not the Apostle of a man.

This is a Pauline writer claiming he is Hebrew of Hebrew And again, claiming he is not the Apostle of a man nor received his teachings from a man.

Galatians 1:1 -
Ga 1:11-12 Jesus can be considered a myth based on the information in sources of antiquity.

Rick Sumner

You realize what the obvious response to this is, right? Any theory can arbitrarily reject the evidence against it, and the subjective nature of interpretation precludes "proof" that it's been falsified.

If a "bunch of amateur internet posters" can't describe the method they use to reach their conclusions, and need Richard Carrier to describe it for them after they reach them, then they didn't reach their conclusions based on evidence. That, my friend, is a tautology.

But I could find all kinds of people who write about their historiography. I don't need to wait for Richard Carrier to do it, and really have no interest in doing so. I want to know what historiography people are actually using to reach their conclusions. Because if they don't have a historiography in mind, they're just wiggling their prejudices and can safely be dismissed as such.

As I've told you before, Carrier has, to date, accomplished nothing that should lead me to regard him as any notable authority. I'm happy he's your hero and you're waiting for his book. He's not mine, and I'm not.

Either you can defend your position or you can't. That's the bottom line. If you need to wait for Carrier to do it for you, then there's only one way you reached your conclusions.

Which is "evidence" of how weak the case for a HJ really is.

-Toto

My professional background isn't terribly relevant, and has nothing to do with charging anyone with hypocrisy. Nor, for that matter, did I charge anyone with hypocrisy for disagreeing with me.

On the contrary, I pointed to specific examples of hypocrisy. Gurugeorge, for example, applying arbitrary criteria to one approach to call it valid, despite the fact that his statements (an acrostic, for example) hold equally true both ways.

That would be hypocrisy. Demanding a standard you don't hold to.

The example more germane to yourself is the simple fact that when challenged by GDon you decided that you "didn't expect to be able to prove" your hypothesis, and then decided that it was good enough just because it seemed likely to you. With no methodological discussion at all.

When you go from that to declaring other cases "weak," you're engaging in hypocrisy.

But it's so much easier to draw battle lines around whether or not people "disagree with me" than to actually back up anything you say, isn't it?

Rick Sumner

This I will agree with (though even if I didn't it's not terribly relevant. I'm not looking for a historiography I agree with, I'm trying to find out if one even exists). Evidence always provides better information about the period of the creator than about the period being described. I would propose that this is equally true of a twentieth century account of Napoleonic France as it is a first century account of early Rome, even if the cultural elements are not obvious to us at present.

Before we go much further (and before we address the term "useless," because the dictum thus far doesn't establish that, and even Virgil had sources, which I'd assume he read carefully given his three line a day pace), I'll take a break to allow anyone to take issue with either the definition of "evidence," or the first historiographic premise born from it.

I'd also welcome anyone who has made the sort of bold claims I started this off condemning to tell me what their existing historiography is. Because to date all anyone has suggested is that we need to wait for Richard Carrier to define the methods for the conclusions we've already reached.